


What makes a god human?

by chiakikanata



Category: Ensemble Stars! (Video Game)
Genre: Happy birthday Kanata!, I love you so so much and Chiaki does too, M/M, but that’s partly why I love them, i don’t really know where I was going with this, kanatas character confuses me chiakana confuses me, party time
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-29
Updated: 2019-08-29
Packaged: 2020-09-29 16:08:55
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,604
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20438792
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chiakikanata/pseuds/chiakikanata
Summary: Ever since that day, Kanata has been following Chiaki, searching for the feeling that makes him believe he can be truly human, truly happy.Maybe he’s already found it.





	What makes a god human?

**Author's Note:**

> Happy birthday Kanata!!! I didn’t intend for this to turn out... as it did, and I don’t really know how it ended up happening... but I really wanted to do something for you today so I guess... here it is. My curious insight into a very special ryusei blue.

Chiaki belongs to the sun. Kanata knows this, and has so for a long time now. He sees it in his passionate smile, hears it in the warmth of his singing voice, and feels it in the heavy heat of his hands when they grasp his ever so slightly too tight. He shines with the ethereal light of a supernova, intangible and blinding in its brilliance. Truly, he’s a distant star, forever slightly out of reach.

However… sometimes, when Chiaki is close enough for Kanata to hear his heartbeat pounding in his ear, and feel Chiaki’s breath hot against his skin, sometimes it is very easy to forget. Sometimes, Kanata tricks himself into believing he and Chiaki belong together, and that the sea can arc up into the sky and be held by the heart of the sun. That he doesn’t have to be pushed back by the sheer radiance of the light that is Chiaki, back into the coldness of space, a lonely satellite orbiting from out of reach, in the empty half light. 

Now, though, the difference between them is plain to see, and Kanata has never felt further apart from his partner. The sunlight filters through the translucent curtains and dances across Chiaki’s skin like a blessing, weaving it’s luminescence into his hair and making him practically glow. It’s too bright for Kanata’s eyes, accustomed to the darkness and murkiness of the grimy seabed, and so he turns away to busy himself with collecting bandages for Chiaki’s injury. 

Chiaki has always been reckless. He gets overwhelmed by his own energy, and burns himself out. Kanata understands why, the heart of the sun is hot and dangerous, not exactly a safe place for any human to make their home. It is a pain, but… that is simply who Chiaki is, and who he will always be. And so Kanata will splash cold water onto Chiaki’s smouldering skin, and allow him to live wherever he chooses without going up in flames. He will follow, and bandage the burns, stitch up the cuts to the best of his ability. He’s not a good sewer yet, but recently he’s been practicing on plushies of sea creatures, turtles, starfish… 

Mending, fixing these insignificant comforts when he has a spare moment, training himself up to fulfill his duty as ryuseitai’s second in command. Which is, naturally, to watch over their brave, shining leader, and assist him from the comfortable shadow he casts. 

That’s his job. That will always be his job, and he wouldn’t have it any other way, because he wouldn’t trust anyone else to care for Chiaki in his place. Chiaki seems strong on stage, and puts on a brave face as part of his ‘Ryusei Red’ persona… but Kanata is not here to look after Ryusei Red, he’s here to look after Chiaki Morisawa, the fragile crybaby who seems like he could shatter into a thousand glowing shards of stardust at any second. A hero, yes, but even heroes need saving sometimes. 

Kanata is clumsy, because it’s been just over a year since Chiaki took him into Ryuseitai and started to teach him about the world — about people and what they feel when they’re happy, sad and worried — but he is learning well. At first it was hard for him to read the lines etched onto Chiaki’s face and determine what he was feeling, but as time slipped away from them he found himself beginning to understand. He had worked hard, of course, because he had lots to learn, and ‘emotions’ are complicated and difficult to comprehend, especially for someone not well versed in the act of simply ‘existing as a human’. 

But Chiaki was patient with him, and whenever Kanata’s mind floats back to those days last year—the beginning of their ryuseitai—he can see what progress he has made. He is much more well versed at handling these strange beings known as ‘people’, and his mistakes are less dire than they were in the past. Of course, Chiaki is the easiest to read. Chiaki is straightforward and honest, and doesn't keep secrets from Kanata or play games with his emotions. Chiaki doesn’t leave things up to interpretation, doesn’t put pressure on Kanata’s intuition to figure out what he’s trying to say. He doesn’t mask simple things with grandiose words and complicated phrases, laying himself out, raw and unfiltered, all that he is before Kanata, a book waiting to be read. 

That has always been what Kanata loves about Chiaki. That has always been what makes Chiaki special. Chiaki is not complicated, he is not a puzzle to be worked on and put into place, slowly, with bruised and tired fingers. He is simply Chiaki, and Kanata understands him in a way he doubts he will ever understand anyone else, maybe even more than he understands himself. And he can’t get his head around why nobody else around him looks at Chiaki properly, why nobody else sees how delicate he is, how he’s fit to burst at any second from everything he’s keeping trapped inside himself. 

Chiaki is easy, and wears his heart on his sleeve, but somehow, Kanata is the only one who can see that. He doesn’t mind, though. Life is big and wide and full of loud, colourful things that blur together in front of Kanata’s eyes and make it hard for him to tell what path he should be taking. However, here, he’s found something that maybe, only he can do. And so he holds onto Chiaki like a light in the darkness, and follows him, hoping that the further along he goes, the clearer things will become. 

A small whine startles him, and he fumbles with the bandages in his hands, almost dropping them. 

“Chiaki?” He turns around, and the corners of his mouth turn up in a fond smile. Chiaki is sitting up, and rubbing his eyes like a sleepy kitten. 

“Oh, Kanata!” His expression lights up, and he waves with much more enthusiasm than someone who had just passed out from overwork should be waving with. 

Kanata unravels the bandages as he walks, and sits down on a chair next to Chiaki’s bed. Here, the sun from outside glares harshly into his eyes, and he squints, crumpling his face up like a deflating pufferfish. Chiaki laughs, and Kanata’s smile grows uncontrollably wider. 

“Chiaki, ‘hold out’ your arm.” He says, after a moment. Chiaki obeys without hesitation, and gently, Kanata rolls up the hot fabric of his ryuseitai jacket, to reveal reddish purple bruises from when he had tripped and fallen earlier. A newly reopened scar is oozing blood, dripping down the damaged skin like the thick ink of an octopus. Kanata shakes his head in disapproval, and begins to work on the necessary repairs. 

Chiaki flinches occasionally, but remains smiling and laughing, babbling on in Kanata’s ear. Chiaki is used to these little injuries, to his ill health, and by now he is also used to the soft touch of Kanata’s skin against his own, working without question or complaint, simply relishing in the contact and the pride of being of use. At first, he was wary, insisting that he could do it himself, but Kanata would not have that. 

Despite how well he knows Chiaki, there has always been one little nagging doubt in the back of his mind that he doesn’t quite understand. Not about Chiaki, but about himself (and maybe Chiaki as well, perhaps). 

Chiaki warmed him up, bright and luminous and shining like a newly born star. His eyes could hold events and emotions in them, things Kanata was alien to, and reflect them in a way Kanata could understand. The excitement at the shocking plot twist in the morning tokusatsu viewing, the exhausted pride glimmering as he watched the first years get a particularly hard dance move correct… 

The gentle feeling Kanata couldn’t put a name to, that gazed at him right now, right here in this stuffy nurses office. The feeling he knew he understood deep down, because he felt it whenever he felt Chiaki, whenever he looked at him and he simply  _ understood _ what he hadn’t before. 

The reason Kanata had been able to learn all these things, about being human, about being a hero… it was because he was getting closer to Chiaki, right? Because he didn’t want to be floating in the cold emptiness of space, he wanted to be closer to the sun, and so he used the one thing he knew to claw himself through blackness, towards the shining red, the beautiful colour that he  _ loved-  _

At least, recently, that was what he had been thinking. But it was big and confusing, and perhaps it wasn’t something with him, but rather something about Chiaki, some side effect of the beautiful spark inside him that had burnt Kanata’s hand when they first touched and now had him wading into the fire to find it again. 

The loyal second in command of ryuseitai, following his leader, trying to understand what it was he made him feel every waking moment of his life. Wondering, perhaps… was this what made him human? Was following this feeling how he would finally come to understand..?

The medical room is quiet asides from Chiaki’s loud voice. Chiaki, who has no doubts about Kanata, and who never will. Chiaki, who knows that one day, effortlessly, Kanata will come to understand. And he’ll look back on this moment, and other meaningless ones just like it, and realise what had been nagging at his mind this whole time.

Love, is what makes you human. 


End file.
